The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Communications,
#751
Mira Nábělková
#79980
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mira Nábělková is a Slovak linguist. In 1975-1980, she studied Slovak and Russian philology at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University of Bratislava, Slovakia. Since 1980, she worked in the Ľudovít Štúr Linguistics Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. She defended her PhD dissertation Relational Adjectives in Slovak: Functional-Semantic Analysis of Desubstantive Derivates in 1989 . In 1991, she co-founded, and until 2000, organised the yearly international Colloquium of Young Linguists , a well-known and very popular event for Slovak, Czech and Polish university students of linguistics and young linguists.
Go to Profile#752
Junko Itō
#42919
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Junko Itō is a Japanese-born American linguist. She is emerita research professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the daughter of mathematician Kiyoshi Itō. Education and research Itō received her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1986 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the supervision of Alan Prince. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1987 and remained there until her retirement in 2021. She served as chair of the department from 1999-2006.
Go to Profile#753
Sheila Whiteley
#34461
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
Sheila Whiteley was an English musicologist known for studying popular music, such as progressive rock music and Britpop. In 1999, she was named professor and chair of popular music at the University of Salford, the first such position in Great Britain. From 1999 to 2001, she was the general secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. She held visiting professorships at the University of Aarhus in 2008, and at the University of Brighton from 2007 to 2009.
Go to Profile#754
Saki
#77584
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (34 years)
is a Japanese heavy metal musician and songwriter. She is best known as guitarist of the all-female band Mary's Blood from 2012 until they began an indefinite hiatus in 2022. She is currently a member of the all-female band Nemophila and one-half of the duo Amahiru with Frédéric Leclercq. Saki has been sponsored by Killer Guitars for over ten years, and often uses custom-made Fascist models. In 2021, they released her signature model, the seven-string KG-Fascinator Seven the Empress.
Go to Profile#755
Virginia Spencer Carr
#49616
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Virginia Spencer Carr was a biographer of Carson McCullers, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles. Carr was also a college professor for more than 25 years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Go to Profile#756
Marti Webb
#66529
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Marti Webb is an English actress and singer, who appeared on stage in Evita, before starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber's one-woman show Tell Me on a Sunday in 1980. This included her biggest hit single, "Take That Look Off Your Face", a UK top three hit, with the parent album also reaching the top three.
Go to Profile#757
Margaret Noodin
#83022
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Margaret A. Noodin is an American poet and Anishinaabemowin language teacher. She directs a tribal Head Start program in Minnesota. She was a professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the director of UW-M's Electa Quinney Institute,
Go to Profile#758
Frederica von Stade
#64724
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Frederica von Stade OAL is a semi-retired American opera singer. Since her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1970, she has performed in operas, musicals, concerts and recitals in venues throughout the world, including La Scala, the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburger Festspielhaus, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and Carnegie Hall. Conductors with whom she has worked include Abbado, Bernstein, Boulez, Giulini, Karajan, Levine, Muti, Ozawa, Sinopoli, Solti and Tilson Thomas. She has also been a prolific and eclectic recording artist, attracting nine Grammy nominations for best classical ...
Go to Profile#759
Jean Kent
#82588
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Jean Kent, born Joan Mildred Field was an English film and television actress. Biography Born Joan Mildred Field in Brixton, London in 1921, the only child of variety performers Norman Carpenter Summerfield, who used the name "Norman Field", and Mildred Lilian, née Noaks, known as "Nina Norre". Kent started her theatrical career at age 10 in 1931 as a dancer. She used the stage name Jean Carr when she appeared as a chorus girl in the Windmill Theatre in London from which she was fired by Vivian Van Damm.
Go to Profile#760
Ewa Wipszycka
#41096
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Ewa Maria Wipszycka-Bravo is a Polish historian and papyrologist specializing in ancient history; a humanities professor and professor emerita at the University of Warsaw. Life and career During her studies at the University of Warsaw she was a member of the Union of Polish Youth . She graduated in 1955, obtained her doctoral degree in 1962, and habilitation in 1972. She became a humanities professor in 1990. Between 1972-1990, she worked at the branch of UW in Białystok where she held the post of deputy dean and dean of the Department of the Humanities.
Go to Profile#761
Zoe Dumitrescu-Bușulenga
#77481
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Zoe Dumitrescu-Bușulenga was a Romanian comparatist and essayist. A native of the national capital Bucharest, she was educated at its main university, going on to become a professor there. Together with a focus on interdisciplinary studies, she was noted for devoting several studies to Mihai Eminescu. Meanwhile, Dumitrescu was a dignitary of the Romanian Communist Party. Following the Romanian Revolution, after several years spent in Rome, she retired to a monastery.
Go to Profile#762
Diane Middlebrook
#41429
Overall Influence
1939 - 2007 (68 years)
Diane Helen Middlebrook was an American biographer, poet, and teacher. She taught feminist studies for many years at Stanford University. She wrote critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath , and jazz musician Billy Tipton.
Go to Profile#763
Lucile Lawrence
#83964
Overall Influence
1907 - 2004 (97 years)
Lucile Lawrence was a leader among American harpists. At the end of her life, she was actively teaching as a faculty member of Boston University and the Manhattan School of Music as well as teaching privately.
Go to Profile#764
Patricia Roc
#82081
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
Patricia Roc was an English film actress, popular in the Gainsborough melodramas such as Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady , though she only made one film in Hollywood, Canyon Passage . She also appeared in Millions Like Us , Jassy , The Brothers and When the Bough Breaks .
Go to Profile#765
Birgit Anette Olsen
#91350
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Birgit Anette Olsen is a Danish linguist, professor at the University of Copenhagen and leader of the Roots of Europe research center. She is an expert on Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European languages in general, especially derivational morphology and the history of Armenian. She has also published important articles on linguistic reconstruction and the history of Latin, Greek, Anatolian and Germanic languages. She was married to Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, and her official surname is Rasmussen, but as a linguist she uses her maiden name Olsen to avoid confusion in references.
Go to Profile#766
Anna Mitgutsch
#51903
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Anna Mitgutsch is an Austrian writer and educator. Her name also appears as Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch. Biography She was born in Linz and studied German and English literature at the University of Salzburg. Originally a Roman Catholic, Mitgutsch converted to Judaism and worked on a kibbutz in Israel. She taught at the Institute for American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and, after going to England, at the University of Hull and University of East Anglia. Next, She taught for a year in Seoul, South Korea and then at colleges and universities in the United States from 1979 until 1985, when Mitgutsch returned to Austria.
Go to Profile#767
Randy Crawford
#61792
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Veronica "Randy" Crawford is an American jazz and R&B singer. She has been more successful in Europe than in the United States, where she has not entered the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist. However, she has appeared on the Hot 100 singles chart twice. The first time was in 1979 as a guest vocalist on The Crusaders' top-40 hit "Street Life". She also dueted with Rick Springfield on the song "Taxi Dancing", which hit number 59 as the B-side of Springfield's hit "Bop Til You Drop". She has had five top-20 hits in the UK, including her 1980 number-two hit, "One Day I'll Fly Away", as well as six UK top-10 albums.
Go to Profile#768
Magda Olivero
#86730
Overall Influence
1910 - 2014 (104 years)
Magda Olivero , was an Italian operatic soprano. Her career started in 1932 when she was 22, and spanned five decades, establishing her "as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage". She has been regarded as "one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century".
Go to Profile#769
Helle Metslang
#95245
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Helle Metslang is an Estonian linguist. Biography Metslang studied Estonian philology at the University of Tartu, graduating in 1974. She subsequently worked at the Institute of the Estonian Language in Tallinn. In 1978 she defended her candidate thesis on syntactic aspects of Estonian folk poetry. She received her doctoral degree at the University of Oulu in 1994 for a comparative study of Estonian and Finnish.
Go to Profile#770
Monica C. Lozano
#20602
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Monica Cecilia Lozano is the president of the College Futures Foundation, based in San Francisco. Previously she was an American newspaper editor, the publisher and CEO of La Opinión and CEO of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. Based in Los Angeles, La Opinión is the largest Spanish publication in the United States. She was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was appointed by the California State Legislature to join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commission on the 21st Century Economy.
Go to Profile#771
E. R. Shipp
#64373
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Etheleen Renee Shipp is an American journalist and columnist. As a columnist for the New York Daily News, she was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "her penetrating columns on race, welfare and other social issues."
Go to Profile#772
Caroline Aherne
#69496
Overall Influence
1963 - 2016 (53 years)
Caroline Mary Aherne was an English actress, comedian, writer, producer and director. She was best known for performing as the acerbic chat show host Mrs Merton, in various roles in The Fast Show, and as Denise in The Royle Family , a series which she co-wrote. She won BAFTA awards for her work on The Mrs Merton Show and The Royle Family.
Go to Profile#773
Diana Ross
#38870
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Diana Ross is an American singer and actress. She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group The Supremes, who became Motown's most successful act during the 1960s and one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. They remain the best-charting woman group in history, with a total of twelve number-one hit singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, including "Where Did Our Love Go", "Baby Love", "Come See About Me", "Stop! In the Name of Love", and "Love Child".
Go to Profile#774
Tamara Brooks
#85205
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Tamara Brooks was an American choral conductor. Biography Brooks studied at the Juilliard School of Music, where she received degrees in piano and in conducting. She went on to have an extremely varied career, of which choral conducting was merely a part.
Go to Profile#775
Kathleen Sullivan
#29752
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Kathleen Sullivan is an American television journalist. She was hired as a news anchor for the newly founded news channel CNN in 1980, when she was 27 years old, and she has also worked for ABC News, CBS News, and The Huffington Post.
Go to Profile#776
Cassandra Wilson
#56831
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is one of the most successful female Jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.
Go to Profile#777
Jennifer Hay
#103596
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Jennifer Bohun Hay is a New Zealand linguist who specialises in sociolinguistics, laboratory phonology, and the history of New Zealand English. As of 2020 she is a full professor at the University of Canterbury.
Go to Profile#778
Ruth Brown
#46215
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Ruth Alston Brown was an American singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes referred to as the "Queen of R&B". She was noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and " He Treats Your Daughter Mean". For these contributions, Atlantic became known as "the house that Ruth built" . Brown was a 1993 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#779
Patrice Buzzanell
#17890
Overall Influence
Patrice Buzzanell is a distinguished professor and former department chair for the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Buzzanell focuses on organizational communication from a feminist viewpoint. A majority of the research Dr. Buzzanell has completed is geared towards how everyday interactions, identities, and social structures can be affected by the intersections of gender. She researches how these dynamics can impact overall practices, decisions, and results in the workplace, and more specificall...
Go to Profile#780
Brigitte Mral
#92151
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Brigitte Mral is a professor of rhetoric at Örebro University. She graduated in 1978 from University of Göttingen with a master's degree, and received a Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1986. She was active as university lecturer at Örebro University from 1987–2000, as professor of media and communication studies 2000–2002, and as professor of rhetoric from 2002.
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Deborah Burton
#84616
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Deborah Burton is an American music theorist, pianist, and academic. She is particularly known for her publications on Giacomo Puccini and his works, including Recondite Harmony and the 2004 book Tosca's Prism: Three Moments of Western Cultural History. She has contributed articles to numerous music journals, including Nuova Rivista Musicale, Opera Quarterly, Studi Musicali, and Theoria.
Go to Profile#782
Judith Robinson-Valéry
#64468
Overall Influence
1933 - 2010 (77 years)
Judith Robinson-Valéry was the foundation professor of French and the head of the School of Western European Languages at the University of New South Wales and later a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She was an important scholar on the thought and creativity of the French poet, essayist and philosopher Paul Valéry.
Go to Profile#783
Andrea Arnold
#73440
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Andrea Arnold, OBE is an English filmmaker and former actor. She won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp in 2005. Her feature films include Red Road , Fish Tank , and American Honey , all of which have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Arnold has also directed four episodes of the Amazon Prime Video series Transparent, as well as all seven episodes of the second season of the HBO series Big Little Lies. Her documentary Cow premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and played at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival.
Go to Profile#784
Anne Reid
#71406
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Anne Reid is a British stage, film and television actress, known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street ; Jean in the sitcom dinnerladies ; and her role as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax for which she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year and received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film The Mother .
Go to Profile#785
Julie Andrews
#58846
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Dame Julie Andrews is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over seven decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for three Tony Awards. One of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s, Andrews has been honoured with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Go to Profile#786
Julie Posetti
#84082
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Julie Posetti is an internationally published Australian journalist and academic. In 2018 she was appointed Senior Research Fellow with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford . There, she leads RISJ's new Journalism Innovation Project. Posetti is the author of UNESCO's landmark global study 'Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age' which examines the erosion of journalistic source protection conventions essential to investigative journalism in the context of national security overreach, and widening surveillance nets. She has won multiple professional awards , and journalism education and research honours .
Go to Profile#787
Dotty Lynch
#95011
Overall Influence
1945 - 2014 (69 years)
Dotty Lynch was an academic, journalist and political pollster, best known for being the first woman to be chief polltaker for a presidential campaign when she worked for Gary Hart. She also served as political advisor to George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.
Go to Profile#788
Dianne Walker
#81006
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Dianne Walker , also known as Lady Di, is an American tap dancer. Her thirty-year career spans Broadway, television, film, and international dance concerts. Walker is the artistic director of TapDancin, Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#789
Tara Brach
#8532
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. . Brach also teaches about Buddhist meditation at centers for meditation and yoga in the United States and Europe, including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California; the Kripalu Center; and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
Go to Profile#790
Susan M. Ervin-Tripp
#26528
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Susan Moore Ervin-Tripp was an American linguist whose psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic research focused on the relation between language use and the development of linguistic forms, especially the developmental changes and structure of interpersonal talk among children.
Go to Profile#791
Shura Baryshnikov
#67638
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Aleksandra "Shura" Lange Baryshnikov is an American dancer, choreographer, dance educator, and actress. Early life Aleksandra Lange Baryshnikov is the daughter of ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and actress Jessica Lange. She is of Finnish descent through her maternal grandmother and of German descent through her maternal grandfather. She has five half-siblings; three on her father's side, including actress Anna Baryshnikov, and two on her mother's side. Baryshnikov trained in classical ballet as a child, and grew up accompanying her mother to different filming locations. In high school Baryshnikov competed in diving, ran track, rode horses, and played field hockey.
Go to Profile#792
Mary Brian
#70238
Overall Influence
1906 - 2002 (96 years)
Mary Brian was an American actress who made the transition from silent films to sound films. Early life Brian was born in Corsicana, Texas, the daughter of Taurrence J. Dantzler and Louise B. Her brother was Taurrence J. Dantzler, Jr.
Go to Profile#793
Linda Steiner
#89956
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Linda Claire Steiner is a professor at Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. She is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Journalism & Communication Monographs, and sits on the editorial board of Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Go to Profile#794
Marianne Ignace
#17779
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Marianne Boelscher Ignace is a Canadian linguist and anthropologist. Married into the Shuswap people, she is a Full professor in the departments of Linguistics and Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University , and Director of SFU's Indigenous Languages Program and First Nations Language Centre. In 2020, Ignace was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for her work in revitalizing and preserving indigenous languages.
Go to Profile#795
Liza Donnelly
#58065
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Liza Donnelly is an American cartoonist and writer, best known for her work in The New Yorker and is resident cartoonist of CBS News. Donnelly is the creator of digital live drawing, a new form of journalism wherein she draws using a tablet, and shares impressions and visual reports of events and news instantly on social media. She has drawn this way for numerous media outlets, including CBS News, The New Yorker, Fusion, NBC and covered live the Oscars, Democratic National Convention, the 2017 Presidential Inauguration, among others. She writes a regular column for Medium on politics and glo...
Go to Profile#796
Kate Pierson
#49279
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Catherine Elizabeth Pierson is an American singer, lyricist, and founding member of the B-52's. She plays guitar, bass and various keyboard instruments. In the early years, as well as being a vocalist, Pierson was the main keyboard player and performed on a keyboard bass during live shows and on many of the band's recordings, taking on a role usually filled by a bass guitar player, which differentiated the band from their contemporaries. This, along with Pierson's distinctive wide-ranging singing voice, remains a trademark of the B-52's' unique sound. Pierson has also collaborated with many other artists including the Ramones, Iggy Pop and R.E.M.
Go to Profile#797
Rahile Dawut
#46902
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Rahile Dawut is an Uyghur ethnographer known for her expertise in Uyghur folklore and traditions. Formerly a professor at Xinjiang University, where she founded the Minorities Folklore Research Centre, she was disappeared by the Chinese government in 2017 and has not been seen since. In 2023, Rahile received a life sentence for "endangering state security".
Go to Profile#798
Leslie Jones
#89796
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Leslie Jones is an American film editor. She is known for her work on The Thin Red Line as well as her collaborations with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Biography Jones is the daughter of film editor Robert C. Jones and the granddaughter of editor Harmon Jones, each of whom has been nominated for an Academy Award for editing. Jones was the assistant editor for her father on two films, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and The Babe. She has several editing credits for independent films and documentaries, and was the associate editor on Grumpier Old Men. Her first editing credit on a major studio film was for Murder at 1600, which she co-edited with Billy Weber.
Go to Profile#799
Sheila Blumstein
#92902
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sheila Ellen Blumstein is professor emerita of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University, where she was the Albert D. Mead Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences. Among other distinctions, she served as the interim president of Brown University from February 2000 until July 2001 after Gordon Gee departed and before Ruth Simmons took the position. Although Dr. Simmons is deemed the first female president of the university, Dr. Blumstein's portrait hangs in Sayles Hall along with those of past presidents.
Go to Profile#800
Maria Teresa Cabré
#37738
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Maria Teresa Cabré i Castellví is a Catalan linguist. She is professor emeritus of Linguistics and Terminology at Pompeu Fabra University . Since 2021, she has been president of the Institute for Catalan Studies. Her areas of expertise are in lexicology, lexicography, terminology, and discourse analysis.
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